[wp-meta] [Making WordPress.org] #2699: Add a new role to the forums: plugin/theme support

[Making WordPress.org]

#2699: Add a new role to the forums: plugin/theme support
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 Reporter:  TacoVerdo       |      Owner:
     Type:  enhancement     |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal          |  Milestone:
Component:  Support Forums  |   Keywords:
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 Plugin and theme authors currently have the power to mark threads as
 resolved within their own support forum, which is great.

 '''Problem description'''
 However, some of the larger plugin/theme shops have a support team to help
 out on their own support forums. I think it would be useful to be able to
 recognize those people in the support forums, like we’re able to recognize
 authors.

 '''Proposal'''
 So what I would like to propose is adding a new role: Plugin/Theme
 Support. Everyone with this role should have rights to mark topics within
 their own support forum as resolved, and should not be affected by posting
 speed limitations for their own support forum. This role should also show
 in the forums as ‘Support’, similar to author.

 The reason why I propose a new role, instead of adding the capability to
 the contributor role is because, in my opinion, they serve a different
 purpose. Let me explain.

 A contributor is someone who helped your open source project forward. This
 can be by providing feedback, writing code, creating images, doing
 marketing or being a friend of the project, for example.

 Someone working on support does contribute his/her (paid) time to your
 project and is in that way a contributor. However, I think there are more
 than enough valid use cases where you don’t want someone who contributed
 code (for example) once to be able to close support request on behalf of
 the author.

 That’s why I think having a separate support role would be viable. It
 would show the community that this person is vetted and answering on
 behalf of the plugin/theme author.

 '''Related ticket'''
 This proposal is related to ticket
 https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2598.

 '''Managing support role'''
 Of course, it should be possible for plugin authors to manage the list of
 support people. I see two reasonable ways to do so, which should be
 mutually exclusive.

 One way is by adding the usernames to the `readme.txt` file, the same way
 contributors are currently added. The other way would be to add users the
 same way committers are currently added, on the Advanced View of the
 plugin.

 '''Showing support staff'''
 To be transparent about this, we’d probably also need a place to list
 people in the support role. This could be the Advanced View page, or even
 the plugin page itself.

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Ticket URL: <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2699>
Making WordPress.org <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/>
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